Pictures
by Irymia
Summary: At first, Wendy just chalked it up to some kids' pranks.


_**Warning:** the following story contains minor violence and gore. Please read at your own discretion._

* * *

I had never been an easily intimidated person. I despised the stereotype about the frightened white girl, always needing her boyfriend to walk her home or hold her hand during a horror movie. Instead, I rather piqued myself on not being afraid of spiders, dentists, mice, and the dark, and encouraged the other girls to do the same. Stan asked me out for a horror movie once and it honestly didn't trouble me much while Stan sat there white as a sheet—wherefore, I failed to comprehend, for a lot of things that regularly transpired in our small mountain town could, in my opinion, hold a candle to what we saw on the screen that day.

That being the case, I could have never imagined, much less prepared for, the strange chain of events that took place in our South Park that saturnine January. No one could.

It started on one nippy unsuspecting morning when I found that weird drawing in our red mailbox. Every day before breakfast, I would go outside to get the mail—it was sort of a family tradition, if you will—and that day, apart from my father's daily, I also pulled out a folded piece of paper. Curious, I unfurled it, only for my brows to crawl up as I saw it was a picture drawn by pencil. It showed the house of one of our neighbors, with a bolt of lightning skewering it smack through the roof and flames burning where the attic was supposed to be. Out of reflex, I turned my head—said house stood completely unscathed.

I looked at the picture again, foxed. There was no signature or anything else in it, leaving me in the dark as to the purpose of its placement in our mailbox at all. Probably some first-grader's prank, I eventually came to a logical conclusion, and headed back into the house, absently stuffing the drawing into my pocket and almost instantly forgetting all about it.

I remembered it, though, on the following day, when I discovered another picture in the same place at the same time. This one depicted a big green truck hitting a kid, with blood splashing around. Whosever it was, I thought to myself, irritated, the joke was stupid, so I didn't deign it with any more attention and this time just threw the note into the garbage can.

The morning after the exact same thing happened. And then again and again. Every sketch limned some disturbing occurrence, be it a car crash, a cave-in, or just someone dying. The unknown artist seemed to have, apart from a surfeit of free time, quite an imagination.

I knew better than to tell my parents about it; if the pranksters failed to elicit any reaction from their victim, i.e. me, I believed they would soon get bored and abandon this pointless enterprise. Besides, it wasn't even anything dangerous or interesting, just some childish drawings…

It must have been the ninth or tenth day since I had found that first picture when a huge storm came down onto South Park. Thunder rolled and rain fell down in buckets; I had holed up in my room, occupied with making a friendship bracelet for my best friend Bebe. I was humming something under my breath when my attention was arrested by my mother's scream downstairs.

"Mom?" I bent over the handrail by the staircase.

"The Jasons' house is on fire!" she told me. She was looking out our living room's window, hand pressed over her mouth in a dramatic gesture.

I scuttered downstairs to press my nose to the pane and…

It was exactly like in that picture. Blazes shrouded the brown house's attic; juxtaposed with that drawing as I remembered it, the image sent a chill down my spine. It looked _exactly _like in that picture.

"It has been struck by lightning," my mother said, oblivious to my catatonia, and went to the phone. "Oh my, I need to call…"

I remained enchanted by the flames for a good few more minutes before a fire engine stopping next to the burning house made me snap out of it. I rushed upstairs to my room like my life depended on it and practically tore the top drawer open, picking up the piece of paper inside. I stared at it; no, my memory had not betrayed me: it looked exactly like the scene I had just witnessed.

I sat down on my bed, the drawing clutched in hand.

_It was just a coincidence, Wendy,_ I told myself. _Just a coincidence. Those happen every day._

Having calmed down, I stood up, put the picture back into the drawer, and returned to weaving the bracelet. My face stayed composed and I started humming that jolly melody I must've heard in an infomercial, again. But if one were to take a closer look, he would have seen that my hands were shaking.

Two days later, after I had completely convinced myself that there was nothing to fret over, and had willed myself not to even look at the drawings in the mail, hurling them straight into the trash instead, I was on my way home after school. My girlfriends and I were discussing which Harry Potter movie we liked the best and we were nearing the consensus that it had to be the second one because Dobby was cute. All of a sudden, we heard a loud hoot. As we turned our heads, it flashed before my eyes in a matter of seconds: a truck failing to slow down in time and thus hitting one of my classmates, Kenny McCormick. Blood splattered all around like ink blotches. Eyes bulging, the driver stared at what used to be Kenny, then hit the gas and zoomed away before anyone could react.

"Oh my god, they killed Kenny!" I heard my ex-boyfriend Stan yell from across the street, and then his best friend Kyle:

"You bastards!"

My girlfriends were oh-ing and ah-ing, too, but I wasn't paying attention, eyes riveted on the brick-red puddle of blood.

The hit-and-run truck had been green and there was some road sign just opposite to where I stood—the spitting image of the scene in the second drawing.

For a few moments, I kind of forgot to breathe.

"Wendy, are you okay?" Rebecca and Bebe looked into my face, worried.

"I… I need to go home!" I dashed down the road, ignoring everyone's shouts. I didn't see the highway or anything else around as I ran, though; all I could see, etched into the back of my eyelids, was the freeze-frame of the poor Kenny being run over by that green truck—just a few seconds on replay, again and again. It was only when I stormed into my room and rummaged through the top drawer that I remembered I had chucked the second day's picture. It wasn't there amongst the few that I had arbitrarily kept but there were illustrations of explosions, accidents, and natural disasters.

I felt almost sick, like I would throw up any moment. I felt like it was my fault that Kenny had died; logic-wise, of course, I knew that wasn't true, but the fear that had grabbed me by the nape was void of any rationality. I remembered the Jasons' attic and the first drawing… but how was this possible? And why me?

_You had been warned about Kenny's death but you thought it was just a joke. You did nothing about it. Kenny died because of you._

No, no, no… I couldn't let more people die…

I winced, grabbing my head with both hands, trying to shake the sickening mixture of terror and guilt out of it. I had to tell someone, now. I couldn't go to my parents: they wouldn't listen, they were adults… My legs carried me downstairs and before I knew it, I was dialing, on our landline, the phone number of the only person whom I felt I could trust with the whole thing at that moment.

"Wendy, what happened? You sounded like you had seen a gho— ah!" I didn't let Bebe finish, for as soon as she appeared on our doorstep, I squeezed her hand and hauled her upstairs.

"Look," I breathed out, heavily, pointing at the drawings, which I by that time had laid out on my bedspread. Bebe eyed them, confused.

"Did you draw these?"

"No. Someone has been putting them into our mail, every day, one picture a day," I was rambling. "At first I thought it was just someone's joke so I threw some of them out… But then our neighbors' house caught fire and it looked exactly like here," my fingertip dug into said drawing, quivering like a leaf. "And today. There was this picture with a truck running over a kid and I-I threw it away but today, that truck hit Kenny, it was the same truck, same place, Kenny was wearing the same clothes, same puddle of blood, everything!"

My voice had gotten high-pitched at the last few words. Bebe's eyes were wide as her gaze toggled back and forth between me and the drawings.

"Do you believe me?" I asked, at that moment dreading a no more than anything else. However, Bebe put her hand on my shoulder.

"I believe you, Wendy," she said firmly. "You're my best friend. I believe you."

I nodded, the fear racing through my body somewhat assuaged. Bebe was my best friend, too. We had been friends since kindergarten and although sometimes we fell out and even fought, we always made up in the end. It didn't matter that she was more concerned with fashion and models than social issues—we didn't need to have the same interests to have fun together and be able to trust each other. She was someone I could share everything with, and that was all that mattered.

"Bebe, what should I do? I don't want those other people to die…"

She frowned at the scattered drawings.

"We need to find out who has been sending you these pictures."

"I always find them in the morning. I got up earlier, at five, once, and it was already there," I said.

"Then we'll have to stay up all night," Bebe decided and turned to look at me. "Would it be okay if I stayed over today?"

"Yes! I mean, I'll ask mom but I'm sure she won't mind!" I exclaimed, relieved. Bebe stayed over at my house quite often so it would be hardly anything new to our parents.

"Cool. Then we can stay up and wait for the guy to turn up."

"It can be a girl, too," I corrected, rather automatically.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll go call my mom."

I even allowed myself to smile, feeling like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. "Thank you."

Bebe returned the smile. "That's what friends are for."

Thankfully, the next day would be Saturday so we didn't have to worry about not getting enough sleep before school. We spent the rest of the day playing Monopoly, doing each other's hair, and stuff. Then my mom called us downstairs for dinner, we watched some TV, and my dad announced it was bedtime.

My mom bid us goodnight as we climbed into our sleeping bags, and switched the lights in my room off. Bebe and I waited for a few minuted before springing and rushing to the window. We had put together something akin to a trap: a noose made out of rope and wire, laid in the snow around the mailbox, with the other end of the rope leading up the house's wall into my window. Once we saw someone step into its circle, we would pull the noose tightly shut, ensnaring the culprit. There was also a rain pipe running right next to my window so Bebe agreed she would slide down it not to let the unwanted guest escape while I would run downstairs and wake up my parents.

The plan seemed perfect. We spelled each other at our post by the window. First I read a book while Bebe was on the lookout, then she went to fetch us some coffee from the kitchen while I kept guard, and sometimes we would both watch, too tired for anything else but idle chit-chat.

It was a long night.

At length, the dawn came, and we saw the mailman, who opened the mailbox to put a newspaper in. We froze when we caught a glimpse of something stark white that was already inside it.

I looked at Bebe and she looked at me. We rushed downstairs and then outside, snatching the white something out of the mailbox. It was yet another drawing.

Bebe's panda eyes blinked in confusion. "But… we were on the lookout the whole night…"

"We didn't leave it unattended even for a moment," I agreed, flummoxed myself. How could this have happened? Last night when we checked the mailbox before going upstairs, it had been empty, and yet…

"I don't understand…"

I scrutinized the drawing in my hands, noticing something. "Hey, Bebe, isn't this…"

"...principal Victoria?" she leaned down too. The woman in the note did indeed resemble our school principal, and she was being wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher. I ah-ed as my fear returned, sinking its merciless claws into me. I could already vividly imagine this happen in real life: paramedics shouting, the students whispering between themselves as our unconscious principal lay on the stretcher…

When I looked up at Bebe's face, she was paler than the snow.

We tried telling the grownups. No one believed us, not even Chef or Mr. Garrison, whom I had always thought to be the most concerned about his students than the other teachers, let alone Principal Victoria herself. An explosion happened in a factory and they showed in on TV, the facsimile of one of the drawings I so carelessly had chucked. The sketches kept appearing every morning like clockwork, and I knew there was no catching the person behind it. I started having nightmares; my parents even took me to the doctor—that's how sick I must've looked. Bebe was the only one who believed me about the whole thing and she supported me as much as she could even though I could tell that what had happened that Saturday had shaken her up pretty bad as well. On Monday, once I entered the classroom, she walked over to me immediately.

"I think we should ask Heidi for help," she said.

"Heidi?"

"Yes, she's good at analyzing stuff. She once helped Annie find out who had sent her a Valentine card by analyzing the pattern in the handwriting and comparing it to everyone else's."

"So you think if I give her one of the pictures…"

"...she could compare the art style to what the other kids draw in art class."

I frowned. "You think it's someone from school?"

"I don't know. But maybe she could help."

"You're better friends with her than I am," I noted.

"Okay, then you give me a picture, and I'll talk to her."

I awaited the next day with great apprehension; first, because I had begun to spend every moment in the fear that something I had seen in a drawing would come true again and second, because I was nervous about what Heidi would find out. What if it really was one of the students? The only one that seemed fit for the role was Eric Cartman but we hadn't talked in weeks. Besides, in the beginning, after I had found the third picture in a row, I had cornered him and grilled him, and he had cried and sworn on his life he hadn't had a hand in it.

When Bebe approached me the next morning, she wore an odd expression.

"Bebe? What is it? Did Heidi find out anything?" I rushed to her but for the first time in my life, she stepped away from me, staring at me as if I had turned into a dinosaur or worse, into a boy.

"Bebe?"

"Wendy…" her gaze ran me up and down, her countenance conflicted. I had a sense of foreboding.

"What's wrong? Why are you—"

She suddenly took my right hand, bringing it closer to her eyes and thus confusing me even further. "Bebe?"

"What's this?"

I looked at my pinky, where some graphite was smudged on the side.

"It's a pencil smudge?" I replied, lost.

Bebe slowly looked up. "Did you do your homework this morning or something?"

"No, why…"

"Then why do you have this, Wendy?"

"I don't know but—" I cut myself off abruptly. I stared at her, then at my pinky. I really had no idea where the smudge had come from; it definitely hadn't been there yesterday and today I had not written a word yet…

Bebe let go of my hand. "Heidi said the strokes in the picture matched your drawing style," she said, quietly.

"But… but I didn't do it… how…"

It was then that the bell rang and we had to go back to the class. For the rest of the day, I remained unable to focus on what the teachers were saying. I kept stealing glances at my right hand like it was some despicable traitor. In PE, Butters Stotch twisted his ankle and fell, his temple hitting a bench and causing fatal injuries. I caught Bebe sending me a look—she had seen this scene in one of the pictures. I gulped.

Somehow I made it till the last period. I was at the end of my rope. Once I had reached my house, I practically flew upstairs, stormed into my room, and snatched my diary from the secret place where I kept it at. Those days, I wrote in it seldomer and seldomer, and it was becoming a vestige of the past. I opened it.

A shrill scream tore out of my throat.

There were pictures. Drawn on every single page, even over my entries in pen. People getting shot, drowning, exploding, stringing themselves up, burning. The people—everyone I knew.

Terror-struck, I dropped the diary, still screaming at the top of my lungs. I looked at my right hand, which didn't feel like a part of my body any longer; a strong urge to chop it off possessed me.

It was true that I had been feeling like I hadn't been getting much sleep lately but the true reason behind it all was only unfolding before my eyes now.

My hand grabbed a pencil. I tried to drop it, to screw it out of it, but failed; my right arm wasn't under my control anymore. I screamed higher when it started drawing on one of my notebooks.

"No, no, no, stop, STOP!" I yelled. It had drawn Bebe with her throat slit, eyes bulging. "STOP! STOP!"

I tried to run out of my room to get to the phone but couldn't, as though my feet had been nailed down to the floor. My fingernails left bloody marks on my skin where I tried to rip the pencil out of my right hand's grip with my left hand; the right hand kept on drawing. It drew my father getting boiled alive—he had always said he thought it the worst way to die—and my mother with her hand stuck in a working blender. My throat was raw from screaming and my face was wet from all the tears streaming down it. And yet, I could do nothing.

My right hand continued to draw.

* * *

The events recounted above happened seven years ago. Since then, I have been living alone, away from civilization, for meeting or even as much as seeing a person in the distance resulted in my right hand producing another gory picture, always.

Everyone I have ever known, spoken to, or just seen in the street once, had died, all a terrible death. Till this day, I still see their deaths in my nightmares—the things I knew would happen but could not prevent them from happening. The deaths that I, despite my will, draw, are macabre and hideous, capable of disgusting the hell out of the most rugged spirits.

I—or rather, my hand—have never, though, drawn my own death. In fact, there has only been one illustration of me, but it made me scream so hard I gave myself a sore throat, for what I saw in it made my blood curdle and scared me more than anything I had ever seen or experienced.

In that one picture, I was drawing.


End file.
